A reminder to me each time I login to ask Jesus something like the following:

There are many atheists here and few Christians. Lord, your power to deliver isn't in numbers or with the "worldly wise". Help me have answers, and good questions. Help me love the unlovely and the unloved. Help me reach those who've been abused at a "Christian" forum or a "Christian" church. Help those I witness to actually pause and think, even if for a moment or two, before they prattle on about how much they hate God's followers and a God who doesn't exist--or how they don't "hate anyone or anything at all" but still come here to curse and mock every Christian's every post.

Please, Jesus, the folks here have free will, but please use me to shut down bad threads and start good ones. Help me not to be afraid to be honest and vulnerable though your word says I will receive calumny and condemnation from those not living in the light of God.

Please, Jesus, amen.

You write
"Please, Jesus, if it helps, take my life and the lives of my spouse and children if it will help these poor souls to see and know your love and your salvation."

But Jesus said

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter in law against her mother in law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household. Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:34–39, NJB.)

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26, KJV.)

“Do not make your way to gentile territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town; go instead to the lost sheep of the House of Israel’” (Matt. 10:5–6, NJB.)

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34, NJB,) and

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:3–5 NKJV,) and

“Happy you who weep now; you shall laugh” (Luke 6:21, NJB,) and

“Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life” (John 12:25, NJB.)

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!...woe to you, blind guides…You blind fools!…You blind men!…You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (Matt. 23:13–34, NJB.)

“Well then, just as the darnel is gathered up and burnt in the fire, so it will be at the end of time. The Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that provoke offences and all who do evil, and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth” (Matt. 13:40–43, NJB.)

“Next he will say to those on his left hand ‘Go away from me with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’’’ (Matt. 25:41, NJB.)

“How happy are you who are poor; yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20, NJB,)

“Anyone who believes in the Son has eternal life, but anyone who refuses to believe in the Son will never see life: the anger of God stays on him” (John 3:33, NJB.)

“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16, NJB.)

“Anyone who does not remain in me is like a branch that has been thrown away—he withers; these branches are collected and thrown on the fire and they are burnt” (John 15:6, NJB.) (A similar quote is repeated in Mark 6:11.)

“Then he began to approach the towns in which most of his miracles had been worked, because they refused to repent. Alas for you Chorazin! Alas for you Bethsaida! For if the miracles done in you were done in Tyre or Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sack cloth and ashes, and still I tell you that it will not go as hard on Judgment day on Tyre or Sidon as with you. And as for you Capernaum, did you want to be exalted as high as heaven? You shall be thrown down in hell for if the miracles done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have been standing yet. And still, I tell you that I will not go as hard with the land of Sodom on Judgment day as with you” (Matt. 11:20–24, NJB.)

“But as for my enemies who did not want me for their king, bring them here and execute them in my presence” (Luke 19:27, NJB.)

And I could go on. I say fuck your bigoted, xenophobic, intolerant, narrow-minded, uneducated, imaginary peasant Jesus and shove him up your arse. Read your own fucking bible and then shove it where the sun don't shine too. Then tell your happy clappy sexually suppressed brainwashed friends to stop preaching to the kids.

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter in law against her mother in law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household. Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:34–39, NJB.)

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26, KJV.)

If it just me, or does Jesus come off as an egocentric fuck?

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

(20-11-2013 07:51 AM)Free Thought Wrote: If it just me, or does Jesus come off as an egocentric fuck?

It's not just you.

Seconded

A man blames his bad childhood on leprechauns. He claims they don't exist, but yet still says without a doubt that they stole all his money and then killed his parents. That's why he became Leprechaun-Man

(15-11-2013 12:19 PM)jaguar3030 Wrote: I have plenty of respect that is reserved for those that have earned it. I have no respect for systems of faith, just as I would have no respect for other items that have no evidence. My respect for you as an individual was seriously damaged by your statement about offering up your family for your faith system.

I don't have a belief system/faith system. I don't cross my fingers, I don't give myself cootie-shots, I don't throw salt over my shoulder, and I don't pray.

Prayer to gods is laughable to atheists, just as you would laugh at catching someone talking to themselves. It passes the point of humour when the delusion takes superiority over the living.

Prayer to a god is laughable/contempible to an atheist, just as masturbation, pornography, adultery, destroying my brain with drugs and alcohol, wasting time, and dishonoring my name, my word and my family is contemptible to me.

WaitWHAT? But you dishonored your family by offering to kill them just to get us to buy into your delusional superstitious bullshit.

And you are wasting your time and ours here, BTW.

Quote:You want to tell us how many of the above you indulge in, and then tell me how atheists have the moral high ground over Christians?

You seem to think that the things you cite above are somehow agreed upon as benchmarks of morality. You are begging the question.

Quote:I call baloney on you.

I stuff your baloney up your ass. With a big splash of habanero sauce.

Porn actors have orgasms real or fake on camera--but they are not in large percentage happy people who enjoy their industry. What seems like an easy way to make money can wear a person thin and prematurely age them emotionally, etc. Where your money goes is who you support--and even clicking on porn links opens new tabs and windows so that criminal elements can attempt to over-report other paid subscribers and launder money.

Some porn actors have been horribly abused, some are runaways, some are addicts. Admittedly some are somewhat holistic people looking for money. They suffer over time. You can be a part of the problem or the solution, just as if everyone followed biblical abstinence unto marriage, STDs would all but disappear from Earth.

Ya'll make a lot of masturbation jokes at this forum. It's not the masturbation but the root lust. We've all lusted and coveted things that are inappropriate and the tenth commandment of Exodus 20 is broader than sexual lust.

Our thought lives reveal to ourselves that we're imperfect. Let's just start with "imperfect" and not "sinners" for now. Heaven is a perfect utopia, the imperfect cannot enter there. Venn diagram it, people.